Hospital Stays - One Year Anniversary

Last year at this time, I was leaving the hospital after a cycle of severe depression. The symptoms of my bipolar became too difficult to manage, and I needed a team of mental health professionals to help me get back to functioning in society.

I strongly dislike hospital stays. For years, one of my main goals in managing my mental illness was staying out of the hospital. There are so many things about being hospitalized for a mental health issue that feels wrong—almost dehumanizing.

Of the wards I’ve been in, there are definitely some that are better than others.  I’ve been to a child and adolescent ward in Omaha, an acute psychiatric ward in Lincoln, a depression ward at the Mayo Clinic and a few different wards at the University of Minnesota (there are several wards, and they don't focus as much on one specific area. Instead they put you wherever they can find a bed). I’ve now been to University of Minnesota psych wards three times on two different floors, so the rest of my description will be based on those stays.

Getting checked into a mental health ward is not like a regular hospital. If you’re been transported in an ambulance, hospital policy requires that you be constrained—no matter if you’re compliant or not. For one of my trips in the ambulance, I was strapped down across my chest and both legs. For the other, I was restrained by a handcuff-like device around my leg.

When entering most mental health wards, you first go into a room with two employees—psych techs—where you go into a closet-sized room and take off all your clothes, then pass them to the psych tech on the other side of the door. All your possessions are surrendered and put into a locker, and all your clothing is checked for anything that could be dangerous. Your phone is locked away, and in most mental health wards, you are not allowed to use your phone for the duration of your stay.

The floors in the U. of M. pych wards are a faux hard wood and heavy, firm furniture sits in a semi-circle around a TV. Behind the TV are several tables surrounded by plastic chairs where meals are served and visitors are met.

The rooms are double occupancy with single beds and thin pillows. On one of my visits, one of the other patients had a softer pillow and gave it to me the day she checked out. I’ve been in some regular hospital beds in the ER for medical reasons, and those beds were definitely more comfortable.

The rooms have a small bathroom with a soft door—a sort of stuffed vinyl. There’s no shower in the room, and when you want to bathe you have to ask a psych tech to open one of the shower rooms.

Privileges on the floor are much different than a regular hospital. While you’re allowed to make phone calls, you have to make them on a phone in the hallway. Visitors are only allowed at certain times, and though exceptions are made, they’re generally only allowed during visiting hours—7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. during the week and an extra hour during the weekend from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Children are also not allowed, though they will sometimes arrange for a private area to see your children, especially if you’ve been in the hospital a long time.

The rhythm of the days are tedious. There’s a lot of waiting. Generally, the doctors make rounds in the mornings to check on how you’re doing and adjust medications. There’s usually a community meeting where staff talks about the rules—keeping things clean, keep conversations appropriate, respecting personal space, etc. There’s usually a question like, “what’s your favorite Flintstone?” and people go around and introduce themselves and say, “Bam Bam,” or whatever, and then say a goal they have for the day.

The rest of the day consists of a lot of killing time between group “therapy.” Sometimes the therapy is helpful—goals and plans for when the hospital stay is over, improving relationships, etc.—but sometimes there things like arts and crafts (which I’ll admit is better than nothing). Killing time generally consists of watching the TV, playing cards, reading, writing, and talking to other patients. The last few times I was in the hospital I met some patients that were helpful to talk to. One nice thing about being in the hospital is finding people to commiserate with.

The hospital is no fun, but at times it’s necessary. At my last stay, my doctor was excellent. He added a medication (lithium) to what I’d already been taking, and things have gone much better for me since then. In the past, I’d been hesitant to take lithium due to its potential side effects and blood draws to check lithium levels, but thankfully everything has gone OK. If I hadn’t been to the hospital, there’s a good chance I never would have been prescribed lithium, and that I wouldn’t have as good of a year as I’ve had.

This year hasn’t been perfect—I’ve had a couple of bipolar episodes that I’ll discuss in another post, but by and large things have been pretty smooth.

Though my last hospital visit brought about a necessary change in my medications, I’d still like to see some changes made to how some hospitals do things. For one thing, I don’t feel like it’s necessary to keep phones out of the hands from patients for their entire stay. Same goes for other electronics like laptops. These things are fine to use in other areas of the hospital. If the staff of the hospital believe they might be dangerous, they could only allow them at certain times in a supervised area.

It would also be nice if visiting hours were more flexible (though they do make exceptions) or extended, so patients could have visitors at more convenient times.. When patients are in other parts of the hospital, visiting hours are long and often visitors can come and go almost all day with close family even being able to spend the night.

I’m thankful to have been out of the hospital for one year. For anyone with a mental illness, I hope that her or his treatment is effective and keeps her or him out of the hospital. My longest stretch since been diagnosed with a mental illness had been seven years, and with the support of family and friends, medications and the excellent caregivers I see on a regular basis, I hope to stay out of the hospital as long as possible.